Landscape with Mercury and Herse

In April 1635 Antwerp staged a welcome for its new governor, the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand, with arches and stages designed by Rubens and painted by about 20 of the city's artists. The magistrate also gave Jan Wildens a commission of his own that year, two views of Antwerp, one of the anchorage and one of the walls seen from the east. Around the same time he painted this landscape, 73 centimetres high and 210 wide. Panels of that shape were made for set places in a room, over a door or above a fireplace. The trees and the distance are his, the figures are by Frans Francken the Younger. The story is from Ovid. Mercury, flying to Athens, passes a line of girls carrying offerings to Pallas Athena and picks out Herse among them. Two heavy trunks divide the view, and the light comes forward from deep in the background, warm, the way Italian landscape painters had been handling it.